Mildred Bartlett life has not been easy, but she believes in angels. “I know that God brought me to Sister Grace in the midst of my trouble and my pain. Sister Grace is an angel. My angel.”
If you are lucky enough to meet Mildred, what you notice from the moment you connect is the joy and compassion that radiate from her. Her deep resonant laugh draws you right into her circle of loving kindness. Deep loss has been a part of her journey. When she was a child in Greenville, North Carolina, she was the oldest of five children. Her mother was an alcoholic and sometimes she would leave the children for two or three days at a time. Little Mildred would climb up on wooden boxes to get food from her neighbors’ windowsills “I would never take all their food.” She would pick out five small biscuits or pieces of meat to feed her little charges. When she was 6 or 7 years old the children were taken into foster care and separated. While the other children later reunited, they never found their youngest brother who disappeared into the system at 11 months old.
In 1979, Mildred was living here in Rochester New York, happily married with four of her own children and “Everything was going beautiful. Everything was awesome.” Then suddenly, shortly after starting at East High, her oldest son dropped dead at school. Ten months later her husband died on a late Sunday afternoon.
“I didn’t have no hope. I didn’t want to live. I did not want to live. I can understand people who are attempted to take suicide. I can understand brokenness, rejection, I never seen my father, wasn’t raised by my mother.” Mildred struggled with hopelessness, addiction and despair as the light drained from her. And then she met Sister Grace at the House of Mercy. Through Sister Grace, Sister Rita and CW, Mildred found her way back to God and back to faith.
One of Mildred’s gifts is her infinite compassion, “My mom had an addiction, just like the people here. There was 13 children in my mother’s family. And she was almost right to the last, to the end, so she was looking for love in all places. And her mama was dead. She was looking for love… She was looking for love and Iook at these people when they come in here and I see them doing this and that and I say to some of the other ones, they aren’t on drugs because they want to. They have pains. Even though they have the pain thing, it is a generation curse, it can go four generations or more, it can pass down until you bring it to a closure. So allowing people to come in here. They in a lot of pain and a lot of hurt, they don’t understand like me. You need the love. Sister Grace, the founder, is like their mother.”
The House of Mercy for Mildred is a family, Sister Grace is the mother, CW the Daddy and Sister Rita, “like an aunt and a mother.” Sister Grace, “She walks with us. I never seen nothing like this in all my life. I just thank god that he allows other people to see the Grace and the Mercy in this place.”
My name is Mildred Bartlett and radical compassion means me standing up boldly telling them that Jesus Christ is alive and he already died for you and you don’t have to stay in that pain and hurt. That he loves you and St. John 663 is proof that he already loves you. If you read it you will come alive, you’ll get healed, you’ll get some joy and you’ll begin to see a new beginning. With Jesus Christ there is never an end. You put NEVER in there big.”